NP Monday July 15, 2019

[Pharaoh RutinTutin 1,619]

https://egscomics.com/egsnp/shs-01

Nerds trying to scientifically analyze Super Powers.

Gotta mention this NSFW Neil deGrasse Tyson clip...

NSFW

[Don Edwards 561]

And in regard to NSFW and superpowers, there are certain documented issues...

[hkmaly 490]

13 hours ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

https://egscomics.com/egsnp/shs-01

Nerds trying to scientifically analyze Super Powers.

Dan is behind DaveB in this.

But yes: iron asteroid fired from railgun with speed of 0.9c is technically bullet. Also something which most planets are not proof against.

(Sydney's shield, meanwhile, possibly is or will be in few upgrades.)

... hmmm ... although ... regarding the "there can always be a more powerful bullet" ... actually there can't. Bullet is something from matter, held together by electromagnetic forces, which have limits. At 0.99c, it's no longer bullet, it's a collection of atoms moving so fast they pass at least few meters through any normal matter.

[Scotty 1,061]

3 hours ago, hkmaly said:

But yes: iron asteroid fired from railgun with speed of 0.9c is technically bullet. Also something which most planets are not proof against.

I'm reminded of this clip from Mass Effect

 

[ijuin 594]

In common parlance, "bulletproof" would be something like "can resist any bullet shot by a human-portable gun". That would take us up to somewhere around .50 BMG rounds, which have a muzzle energy of around 20 kJ (compared against 3 kJ for a .30-06 rifle cartridge).

Typical ballistic body armor is rated on a scale from I to IV, with type IV capable of protecting against a .30-06 projectile. Stronger armors exist, but are not rated by the US Department of Defense, and generally additional protection comes at the expense of mobility (e.g. heavier ceramic plates).

Now, Super Elliot is obviously inspired by Superman, so let's look into that a bit. The 1930s version of Superman was explicitly described as "nothing less than a bursting (artillery) shell could penetrate his skin". The shell shown in illustrations tended to be about six-inch caliber (155 mm), so let's use the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M114_155_mm_howitzer , a typical artillery piece of that era, as an example. The shells used by that howitzer massed 43 kilograms and had a muzzle velocity of 564 m/s, which gives a kinetic energy of about 6.8 MJ, plus 29 MJ of energy from the explosion of its 6.86 kg payload of TNT, for a total of about 36 MJ--about equal to ten or twelve thousand .30-06 rifle rounds.

Other versions of Superman tended to be even more resilient, such as the Silver Age Superman, who could endure supernovas. He was depicted as being utterly invulnerable to anything except for:

• Magic
• Kryptonite
• Light/radiation from a red star (which suppressed the light/radiation from yellow or hotter stars which empowered him, effectively yielding him equal to an Earth human)
• Materials or life forms native to a red-star environment, such as that possessed by Krypton before its destruction. Such materials experienced a comparable increase in durability to Superman himself, so for example a knife of Kryptonian metal would cut him.

That said, and returning to the question of Super Elliot and his level of resistance, let us suppose that Super Elliot is essentially a male version of Cheerleadra with enhanced musculature. Cheerleadra was able to take a direct hit from the Bulldog Dragon's energy attack--an attack that Dex was aware would kill every unshielded person in a room--and was merely stunned. We don't have enough information to put a number on the energy of that attack, but the lack of damage to the pavement here and here probably puts it as a few times less energetic than the above-described 155 mm shell. That still leaves Cheerleadra (and by implication, Super Elliot) easily able to shrug off .30-06 rounds and even .50 BMG rounds.

[Scotty 1,061]

That's not Elliot though, Tedd's watching a superhero TV show.

[Pharaoh RutinTutin 1,619]

"Like Tuna Fish!"

"Salmon Brain"

What is going on with the fishy references?

Is this NP story going to be Dan's outlet for for all his aquatic puns?

Or do we take him to school?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6l1GvDWtccI

 

[ChronosCat 158]

Background watch: Starburst backgrounds in panels one and two.

6 hours ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

"Like Tuna Fish!"

"Salmon Brain"

What is going on with the fishy references?

Fish-themed villains, presumably.

[Tom Sewell 268]

Serious discussion of Superman goes back at least to 1971, when Larry Niven published an essay called "Man of Steel, Woman of Tissue Paper".

I haven't read a Superman comic for a long while, but I do remember that in at least one Superman didn't have bullets, etc, bounce off his body or some invisible force field, but phased out so that they passed through him. Sound familiar? Dan has given Immortals the same power.

I think I remember the Mythbusters episode where they proved that the CGI underwater machine gun bullets in Saving Private Ryan were B.S. One of the standard techniques in firearm forensics is firing into a quite-reasonably-sized tub of water in order to recover bullets that aren't distorted from impact.

You can get projectiles to move underwater for longer distances--really big projectiles. The 18.1 inch monsters the Yamato fired were designed to do exactly that, hopefully converting a near miss into a penetrating hit under the armor belts of other battleships, and this did happen on rare occasions with smaller cannon shells and shot. Actually counting on this turned out to be a genuinely amazing crackpot theory that failed horribly.

However, you can build rockets that will have much longer ranges underwater; the Russians build rocket torpedoes designed to catch up with modern nuclear submarines, which are usually faster than surface ships and most conventional torpedoes.

[hkmaly 490]

17 hours ago, ijuin said:

In common parlance, "bulletproof" would be something like "can resist any bullet shot by a human-portable gun". That would take us up to somewhere around .50 BMG rounds, which have a muzzle energy of around 20 kJ (compared against 3 kJ for a .30-06 rifle cartridge).

Dabbler from Grrrl power DOES have human-portable railgun. I'm not sure what energy it has, but it's designed to shoot derelict satellites out of orbit, so ...

Now, Dan didn't really shown any serious weapons, but Uryuom traveled from other solar system. It's quite likely some of their technology can be turned into something stronger than what you described.

... not speaking about the fact that TF-gun, while not firing any bullets, would successfully transform any target no matter if bulletproof bullet resistant or not.

1 hour ago, Tom Sewell said:

I think I remember the Mythbusters episode where they proved that the CGI underwater machine gun bullets in Saving Private Ryan were B.S. One of the standard techniques in firearm forensics is firing into a quite-reasonably-sized tub of water in order to recover bullets that aren't distorted from impact.

You can get projectiles to move underwater for longer distances--really big projectiles. The 18.1 inch monsters the Yamato fired were designed to do exactly that, hopefully converting a near miss into a penetrating hit under the armor belts of other battleships, and this did happen on rare occasions with smaller cannon shells and shot. Actually counting on this turned out to be a genuinely amazing crackpot theory that failed horribly.

However, you can build rockets that will have much longer ranges underwater; the Russians build rocket torpedoes designed to catch up with modern nuclear submarines, which are usually faster than surface ships and most conventional torpedoes.

The catch is that those rocket torpedoes are propelled whole way. Anything relying on inertia will lose speed underwater quite fast, occasional success with those cannon shells notwithstanding.

 

[Pharaoh RutinTutin 1,619]

15 hours ago, Tom Sewell said:

monsters the Yamato fired...

I thought the Yamato fired energy weapons through the vacuum of space?

[hkmaly 490]

9 hours ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

On 7/17/2019 at 1:56 AM, Tom Sewell said:

monsters the Yamato fired...

I thought the Yamato fired energy weapons through the vacuum of space?

You need to distinguish multiple ships with same name. Just like Enterprise may be HMS Enterprise or U.S.S. Enterprise, with designation SP-790, CV-6, CVN-65, CVN-80, NX-01, NCC-1701, NCC-1701 A/B/C/D/E/F/J ... there are multiple Yamatos, and Tom Sewell means this one and not this one.

[Tom Sewell 268]

16 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

You need to distinguish multiple ships with same name. Just like Enterprise may be HMS Enterprise or U.S.S. Enterprise, with designation SP-790, CV-6, CVN-65, CVN-80, NX-01, NCC-1701, NCC-1701 A/B/C/D/E/F/J ... there are multiple Yamatos, and Tom Sewell means this one and not this one.

But the best kind of Yamato is a Yamato nadeshiko.

Edited July 18, 2019 by Tom Sewell
misspelled "nadeshiko"

[hkmaly 490]

12 minutes ago, Tom Sewell said:

27 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

You need to distinguish multiple ships with same name. Just like Enterprise may be HMS Enterprise or U.S.S. Enterprise, with designation SP-790, CV-6, CVN-65, CVN-80, NX-01, NCC-1701, NCC-1701 A/B/C/D/E/F/J ... there are multiple Yamatos, and Tom Sewell means this one and not this one.

But the best kind of Yamato is a Yamato nadeshiko.

However, that Yamato didn't fired anything. (reading TVTropes ...) Usually.